Google has announced that Google Wave, it’s new real-time online communication
and collaboration tool for friends, will go live at the end of September.

Initially, the service will only be available to around 100,000 people, who must sign up for the chance to be granted early access. Google is expected to roll out Google Wave to the general web public a month or so later.

So far, only around 25,000 developers building applications and tools for Google Wave have been able to access the service.

Google believes Wave represents the “next step” in online communication, combining real-time chat and email in to a single web browser window. Groups of friends will be able to set up a Wave, and swap photos, maps, videos, documents and other information “live” over the internet in real time.

Even instant-messaging style chats between friends will be in real time, with the Google Wave screen showing what a person is typing as they type it. Users will even be able to pull in feeds from sites such as Flickr and Twitter, and show those within their Wave.

Google said that in the run-up to the first wave of invitations to try out the new service, it will focus on improving the speed, stability and usability of Wave.

Developers are busy creating plug-ins and widgets for Wave which will extend the functionality of the service. One such project, dubbed Waves in WordPress, will enable web users with a WordPress blog to embed entire Wave conversations in a blog post, allowing readers to view and interact with the conversation.